Focus Five Award

Torbay Development Agency in association with Education Business Partnership – South West

The Award

Focus Five has been created by employers to support young people to develop and evidence their employability skills. It places an emphasis on activities outside the classroom encouraging young people to take responsibility for their own development and supports the aim of enterprise learning requiring ‘an environment where pupils are expected to take personal responsibility for their own actions’ (Ofsted).

The Big Five

As the name suggests, the Focus Five Award is assessed under the following five categories:

Communication skills

Organisational skills

Work as part of a team

Customer Care

Problem solving

Personal and professional skills are also incorporated into the award. Although these skills do not carry any scoring during assessment, mentors and assessors will be looking for participants to demonstrate professionalism during all parts of the award.

The Outcome

The Focus Five Award aims to:

Enable participating young people to demonstrate their core “employability” skills to employers

Better prepare participants for the world of work

Give participants the chance to develop their confidence by working with a mentor from a local business

Help participants to showcase their personal commitment, enthusiasm, initiative and drive

Give participants a head start in the employment market

Steve was invited to take part in interviews to give young students at Westlands School a chance to experience interview skills for employment. FOCUS Five was successfully completed this April in the 5 schools that took part within Torbay.

Yvonne Paddon, Partnership Adviser at Education Business Partnership-South West, said ‘We have had many success stories of students not only producing some excellent work but also performing really well in their final interviews. Many thanks for the valuable input you added to the process by supporting the students either during the mentoring stage or in the final assessment or in some cases both! The staff in the school are very grateful for the work that you have done and would like me to pass on their thanks too.’

Steve attended the presentation evening to celebrate the Focus Five Award.